West Village
New York
USA
Residential Apartment Combination
5,263 gross SF
Property Cost: Undisclosed
By Gay Gassmann for Architectural Digest Magazine:
When actor Christopher Meloni—best known as NYPD detective Elliot Stabler in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit—and his wife, artist Sherman Williams, went hunting for a new home, one thing was nonnegotiable: a view. In both SoHo and near Central Park, the couple had watched prized vistas disappear as high-rises went up around them. “The views are important to us,” Williams says. They found what they were quite literally looking for in a sprawling two-level residence with wraparound terraces and 360-degree city views. Most importantly, it was in the West Village, an area protected from high-rises because of historic preservation. Originally carved into six separate apartments but owned by one person, the town house presented both opportunity and challenge. The main issue was stitching all those smaller spaces into one cohesive whole. Architect Alexander Loyer Hughes suggested starting fresh—gutting the interiors, working around the immovable pipes and structural columns, and threading in a new connecting staircase. “The building is really strict,” Hughes notes, “so approvals and paperwork took time and lots of patience.”
The ambitious renovation stretched across three and a half years, complicated by COVID. Meloni remembers moving in before every detail was finished: “We kind of forced things along by living here. No one likes people looking over their shoulder while they’re working—it was awkward—but I think it helped.” The layout was created to be as open as possible, drawing inspiration from loft living while strategically enclosing private areas like the bedroom, dressing spaces, and Meloni’s office.
Photographs 1 - 14 by Max Burkhalter for AD Magazine ©
All remaining images by KURV Architecture ©
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